


The Memory Remains

by Silent_So_Long



Category: Bandom, Metallica, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Comedy, Crossover, Gen, RPF, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_So_Long/pseuds/Silent_So_Long
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew of the Enterprise encounter a patch of temporal time displacement and strange things happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Memory Remains

**Author's Note:**

> This story came about because of a comment I left on the Friday Meta: Mutifannishness post, on the jim_and_bones community. (post found [here](http://jim-and-bones.livejournal.com/495547.html#cutid1)) In a nutshell, this post talked about other fandoms that members of the comm are involved in other than Trek. One of mine is actually bandom, - the Metallica fandom. I used to write Metallica fanfic, although haven’t done so in a couple years. There is no real reason for this, however, and so, in this comments to this post, lindmere gave me the plot bunny of a crossover between Star Trek and Metallica. This is what I came up with up and I just knew it was going to end up cracky, because my brain is mad.  
> Also, the title and the lyrics included throughout this fic are taken from one of my favourite Metallica songs - The Memory Remains. The Sonisphere Festival mentioned in the latter half of this story exists and took place earlier this year in the grounds of Knebworth. This did, indeed, mark the first time that the Big Four of thrash metal ever performed together on one stage in England. I was in attendance with my father and I can honestly say that that festival was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to and was the first time I’ve ever seen Metallica live. I’ll never forget that experience! ♥

Sometimes, space could be a funny old thing, Jim mused, as he stared at the screen displaying the vista of stars surrounding the Enterprise. Despite the hustle and bustle of the ship itself, no one could truly escape the utter loneliness of space itself, especially uninhabited sectors such as the one they were currently sailing through.

He rested his chin upon one hand, while the familiar sounds of Uhura scanning all frequencies for communications filled the space behind him. He continued staring at the screen, barely noticing the arrival of Bones onto the Bridge and the quiet approach the doctor made to the captain’s chair. Bones, for once, remained silent, mindful of the captain’s seemingly sombre mood. Still, however, the doctor’s eyes scanned Jim’s face and body for outward signs of distress. Even though Jim looked no more tense than usual, Bones still kept his trained doctor’s eye upon the captain, in case a change occurred in his friend.

“Something’s approaching, Captain,” Sulu announced, voice sounding oddly sombre in the confines of the bridge.

“I see it, Sulu, thanks,” Jim replied, straightening from his slouch as he stared at the sight displayed on the screen.

“What the devil is that thing out there, Jim?” Bones asked, blue eyes narrowed as he stared at the sight displayed before them.

“I have no idea. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Jim replied, glancing at the doctor in confusion.

Outside the sleek lines of the Enterprise's body, hovered an amorphous mass of almost liquid proportions, a shifting miasma of rainbow clouds, coalescing from gas into liquid and back again. Jim had a very bad feeling about this, that he shouldn’t let the whatever-it-was outside come within touching distance of any of the Enterprise’s shields.

“Chekov, scan that thing, would you? And Sulu, arm the phaser banks, just in case,” Jim said, rising slightly from his seat, caught halfway between sitting and standing, hands supporting his weight against the chair's armrests.

Sulu and Chekov replied in the positive, jumping to their assigned tasks with alacrity. Bones looked up when Spock joined them, one Vulcan eyebrow raised artfully as the science engineer examined the floating mass outside.

“Whatever that mass is, it’s truly fascinating,” Spock observed, as calm as ever.

“You would think so, Spock,” Jim replied, with a smile at his friend. “However, that offers no insight into what that thing actually is.”

“Indeed. However, I have no answers for you, Jim,” Spock replied, turning his raised-eyebrow look upon the captain. “The sensors showed that there was nothing outside except for the usual stars. “

“The sensors are plainly wrong, Spock,” Bones said, before Jim could.

Spock turned an affronted look upon the doctor, yet did not have the chance to speak further. Outside, the amorphous mass began to move, quickly, flowing with rapid fluidity over the hull of the ship before anyone could react. A bright light flooded the Bridge, washing over everything and everyone, leaving a warm glow in its wake. When Jim blinked back into reality, it was find that everything was back to normal, as though nothing in particular had just transpired.

“What the devil just happened, Jim?” Bones asked, turning confused frown onto the captain.

“I have no idea, but I have a feeling we’re going to find out, soon enough,,” Jim replied, with a puzzled grin.

Despite his grin, Jim still felt uneasy, as though that whatever he expected to happen would foretell great trouble for the Enterprise. Nothing ever went smoothly for them, especially when faced with weird amorphous clouds of gelatinous gas/liquid things that swallowed the ship.

“Sir, we have an incoming message,” Uhura said, mere seconds before a burst of music assailed their ears.

Heavy metal guitars sliced through the air, adding power chords and shredding riffs to the mix of rumbling slapped bass and scattergun drumming. In amongst the loud, insistent music came the sound of a male voice, singing urgently yet melodically.

“Like twisted vines that grow, that hide and swallow mansions whole, and dim the light of an already faded prima donna,” sang the voice, adding a somewhat creepy light to proceedings.

“What the hell?” Jim asked, as he twisted around in his seat to stare accusingly at Uhura, as though she was responsible for the music.

She shrugged, staring back at Jim with an equally puzzled expression. The music continued to swell around them, building to an awesome crescendo of noise.

“Fortune, fame, mirror vain, gone insane..., but the memory remains,” crooned the voice surrounding them.

Bones was staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide and lending the doctor an almost innocent expression. Jim glanced towards his friend, but Bones seemed too intent upon listening to the music to offer any explanations. When Jim turned to face Spock, it was to find the Vulcan tapping his feet along to the pulse of the music, intense concentration pulling his brows low over his eyes. Suddenly, Spock leapt into action, throwing his arms up into the air and throwing devil horns with both hands, index finger and pinky finger outstretched on each hand, while the rest of his fingers curled close against each palm. The Vulcan began to bang his head in time with the music, body bobbing and swaying along with the guitars. Suddenly, Spock leapt from the ground while the whole crew watched, performing great jumps and leaps upon the spot, while Chekov and Sulu cheered the Vulcan on. Jim and Bones could only watch in mounting horror, unused to Spock completely losing all of his inhibitions the way that he was.

“Has he run mad, Jim?” Bones asked, turning a concerned look upon the captain.

“I don’t think so, Bones,” Jim replied, amusement at the Vulcan’s predicament soon replacing the horror of before. “I think this music is somehow responsible. It is somewhat hypnotic, don’t you think?”

“I guess, but I don’t feel the need to do whatever the hell Spock’s doing,” Bones replied.

“No, me neither,” Jim agreed, even as he began to laugh at the still moshing Spock.

Little did Bones and Jim realize that they would soon both be eating their words. Soon enough, however, the music stopped, with no explanation as to why they’d been hearing it or where it had even arrived from. Jim ordered them all back to their posts and to continue on their designated course through space, deciding not to spare Spock’s obvious embarrassment by not openly remarking upon the Vulcan’s bizarre behaviour.

~*~*~*~

Later that afternoon and the music started up again. It was the same song as before, and Bones was in the sickbay, tending to one of his patients. He straightened as soon as the music piped its way into the Sickbay, before he suddenly felt the urge to play the guitar. His arms rose and he mimed along quite dramatically with the music, keeping perfect time with the thrashing chords and the fast solos that permeated the song.

“Doctor! What in God’s name are you doing?” Nurse Chapel asked from the doorway.

Bones turned and shrugged helplessly at her, still miming and playing the air guitar along with the surging music.

“I can’t stop, Christine,” he yelled over the music. “It’s almost like the music is doing it.”

As if to prove a point, the music stopped and Bones also stopped. The absence of noise and movement left Bones a very embarrassed doctor indeed.

“Now I know what that poker-faced Vulcan must have felt like,” he muttered, more to himself than to the nurse.

“Spock? He was playing the air guitar?” Christine asked, hiding a laugh behind her hand very unsuccessfully.

“No. Actually, he was throwing devil horns and jumped up and down on the spot. He looked quite ungainly,” Bones replied, a smile beginning to grow on his face. “You should have seen him.”

“I wish I had,” the nurse replied, laughter swelling from behind her hand. “If he looked anywhere near as funny as you just did ... “

“Shut up,” Bones growled, but without any true anger.

His continuing smile softened the edges of his words and brought out his southern accent further than normal.

“We’ll have no more talk about this, okay?” Bones asked the nurse, insistently.

“If you insist,” Christine replied. “You did look pretty heroic, though.”

“Heroic, my ass,” Bones replied, although Christine could see that he looked very pleased by the compliment. “Back to your duties, Nurse.”

“As you wish,” she replied, with a small, and very cheeky, curtsey.

Bones smiled as she turned away, before returning to his own duties as though nothing had just happened.

~*~*~*~

Throughout the remainder of the day, the music drifted throughout the ship, invading every corner possible of the Enterprise. Scotty fell victim in the Engineering bay, overtaken by the music and singing quite lustily along with the words, even though he had no idea what the song even was. He proved to have a very fine singing voice, something that he previously didn’t know about himself.

Uhura proved to be a very efficient air-drummer, clanging invisible cymbals and bashing equally transparent snare drums with great alacrity. In one of the recc rooms later in the evening, the entire ensemble of Uhura on drums, Bones on air guitar and Scotty on vocals convened upon each other when the music began to play again. Spock stumbled to his feet and danced along in front of them, throwing helpless shapes about the recc room floor.

Jim, of course, found his crew very funny, up until the point where he felt compelled to get up and play air guitar alongside Bones. Unlike the ship’s kind-hearted surgeon, however, Jim took the solo guitar’s role, while Bones plugged away on air rhythm guitar. They made a good team, as per usual.

Suddenly, a loud scream came from outside and a strangled call from the transporter room hailed the immediate attention of the Captain. Thinking that his ship was in danger, Jim managed to wrest himself from the tableaux he was a part of and ran from the recc room at a hectic pace.

As if his motion away from them managed to free the rest of the impromptu ship’s band from their respective roles, they scattered and followed in the captain’s footsteps. They all joined him in the transporter room, just as the platform hummed into glowing life, panels at the back lighting as four figures formed upon the platform in glowing whirring life.

“I can’t stop it. I don’t know what’s happening,” yelled the red shirt of the week at the transporter controls.

“Never mind. Let whoever it is on,” Jim ordered, hazel eyes trained upon the platform.

He waited,, body tense and ready, before the forms coalesced into more coherent shapes. Upon the platform, stood four men, all looking curiously around the room. One had long curly hair and was carrying a guitar with a picture of Boris Karloff emblazoned across it in bright colours. Next to him, stood a small and balding man, holding a pair of drumsticks and the joints on his fingers taped up. Beside the stick wielding man stood a muscular Mexican man with long hair and a bass guitar. Next to him stood a cheerfully grinning tall man, with a goatee beard and tattoos emblazoned across every inch of skin upon both arms. He was carrying an ice white oddly shaped guitar proudly.

“Who the hell are you?” the goatee beard man asked, still grinning.

“We could ask the same thing about you,” Jim replied, showing no fear of the strangers.

He was only glad that they were carrying musical instruments and not weapons of any kind. He doubted that they could inflict much damage with a pair of drumsticks unless they really wanted to insert them up someone’s nose.

“What are you doing on my ship?” Jim continued, as though the drumstick in nostril thought had never occurred to him.

“We’re on our way to a gig, man, but ended up here,” the goatee bearded wonder replied. “This doesn’t look anything like Knebworth.”

“I don’t know where that is,” Jim replied, slowly.

“Knebworth. That’s in England. We’re supposed to be playing at a festival there this evening. We were just practicing and now we’re here. We’re Metallica, part of the Big Four of heavy metal. The Sonisphere Festival is quite important to us; it’s the first time the Big Four have ever played together in England,” the man explained. “You must have heard about it. “

“No. Sorry to disappoint,” Jim said, quietly, wondering just what the man was talking about. “You lost me. What’s your name?”

“James,” the man said. “James Hetfield.”

“Hey, I’m James, too. James T Kirk,” Jim replied.

“Kirk? That’s my name,” the curly haired guitarist said. “Kirk Hammett.”

“See, we’re getting to know each other already,” Jim replied, with a smile. “Who are the rest of you?”

The man with the drumsticks introduced himself as Lars Ulrich, while the long haired Mexican introduced himself as Robert Trujillo. Then came the rounds of introductions from the rest of the bridge crew, including a very awed Scotty, who seemed almost afraid of the newcomers.

“Say, while we’re here, why don’t we play for you? Until we get off this ship, that is,” Lars offered, hopefully.

Jim agreed, graciously, while signalling to Scotty to try and get them off the ship anyway. The engineer nodded, and worked diligently at the controls, which had seemingly fried when Metallica had beamed aboard. While Metallica were playing, Spock pulled Jim aside and spoke to him.

“It would seem that the cloud that attacked us earlier, was some kind of portal into the past,” the Vulcan hypothesised, having been thinking while the introductions were being made. “It also appears to have brought these four gentlemen with it. I think it may have been some kind of temporal time displacement.”

“Right, okay, that makes sense. Now how do we get rid of them?” Jim asked, as he turned his gaze upon the four members of Metallica. “Not that I’m not enjoying their music, but they really need to return to their own time.”

“Indeed. All I can suggest at this juncture is wait for the cloud that we saw before to return and send them into the heart of it,” Spock said, calmly.

“And just hope for the best, right?” Jim asked, sounding unconvinced. “It all sounds a little tenuous to me, Spock.”

“Maybe so, but that is all we have to go on, sir,” Spock told him, calmly.

“Indeed. So, in the meantime, we just lay back and think of Starfleet,” Jim murmured, before waving away the Vulcan’s head tilt, the only gesture that the Vulcan ever gave to indicate his confusion.

Spock remained silent and watched as Jim joined the rest of the crew members present as they watched the band playing. Some time later and Chekov reported to the captain that the cloud of amorphous gas/liquid was back outside again. Jim ushered the members of the band onto the transporter platform and told Scotty to beam them into the field of temporal time displacement. Scotty did so without question, mouth pursed in concentration as he watched Metallica disappear into the shifting yellow and blue fields of transportation. Finally the platform was clear, leaving no trace behind of their visitors from the past.

Jim couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Even though Metallica didn’t belong either on the ship or in the Enterprise's time frame, he still thought the experience quite exciting. Spock’s added further hypotheses regarding the music they’d been hearing all day. His thoughts seemed to run along the lines that their communication consoles had somehow picked up on the rehearsal time that James Hetfield had mentioned in his introductory speech, channelled there via the cloud of temporal time displacement. Jim, having no other explanations of his own, shrugged and accepted the Vulcan’s logic without question.

Over the course of the next few days, however, he still found himself listening for the traces of music playing across the Enterprise, yet the music never came. He tried to hide his disappointment, although neither Spock nor Bones seemed to miss the music. In that, for once, they seemed in agreement.

~~ the end ~~


End file.
